UMTRI awarded $14.9 million USDOT connected vehicle contract

August 31, 2011

UMTRI has been awarded a $14.9 million contract from the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) to conduct a safety pilot model deployment of Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) safety applications in Ann Arbor, MI.

The 30-month program will establish a real world, multimodal test site in Ann Arbor for enabling wireless communications among vehicles and roadside equipment for use in generating data to enable safety applications. Passenger cars, commercial trucks, and transit buses will be included that are equipped with a mix of integrated, retrofit, and aftermarket V2V and V2I-based safety systems, a technology that could prevent thousands of crashes.

ﾓThis is a tremendous opportunity, and we are very excited to be able to support the USDOTﾒs demonstration of cutting-edge transportation technologies in our community.ﾔ said Program Manager Jim Sayer, an associate research scientist at UMTRI.

The data generated and archived as part of the model deployment will be used for estimating safety benefits in support of future policy decisions by the USDOT, as well as for use by the broader transportation industry in developing additional safety, mobility, and environmental applications utilizing wireless technologies. The testing phase will last twelve (12) months, and include approximately 2,850 vehicles.

ﾓWe feel honored to be hosting the national test environment for vehicles that donﾒt crashﾔ said Peter Sweatman, UMTRI director, adding ﾓwe look forward to helping many private and public sector organizations advance connected vehicle technologies which save lives and promote efficient movement of cars, trucks and transit busesﾔ.

Partners in supporting UMTRI on the program include the Michigan Department of Transportation, the City of Ann Arbor, Parsons Brinkerhoff, Mixon Hill, HNTB, SAIC, Texas Transportation Institute, AAA of Michigan, and ESCRYPT. Additional support is being provided by the Office of the Vice President of Research at the University of Michigan and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.